Shared housing

Cohousing is defined as the desire of several households to pool their resources in order to design and/or finance collective housing. It is a concept based on solidarity, democracy, responsibility, respect for the environment, sharing and social diversity.

Combining the need for privacy and the need for social ties, the collective housing project appears as a solution with multiple advantages. It is not only about the construction of a habitat but also that of a collective. A group is created and decides to live together. Everything has to be decided; What means should be put in place to communicate? How will decisions be made? How do we manage and share tasks? In the same place come together private spaces and common areas: guest rooms, shared laundry rooms, shared garden and terrace, games room or library. The inhabitants therefore experience group life while respecting everyone’s need for privacy. Most of the time people participate to the very conception of the buildings, deciding together according to their specific needs and their needs as a community of inhabitants. Objectives of bioconstruction, thermal insulation, energy and water management can be coupled with values of responsible consumption, purchases of local products such as CSA products or in local shops. It can also be a place for social, cultural and ecological experimentation. Cohousing projects can be found in rural, suburban or urban areas in many parts of the world.

Equivalent concepts

Bofælleskaberi, shared housing, habitat groupé, cooperative housing, inclusive housing, habitat participatif, habitat autogéré, coopératives d'habitants, Vivienda cooperativa en cesión de uso.

History of the concept

First intent of cohousing with shared spaces and private spaces - the bofælleskaberi - in 1964 by the Danish arquitect Jan Gudmand-Høyer. In 1968, he published an article "The missing link between utopia and the dated single-family house".

Cohousing around Europe

France

Participatory housing is recognized by the French Alur law (24 March 2014) as “a citizen approach that allows natural persons to join forces in order to participate in the definition and design of their housing and spaces intended for common use, to build or acquire one or more buildings intended for their home and to ensure their subsequent management”.

If this phenomenon affects different kinds of populations, it should also be noted that colocation also represents a solution for older populations as demonstrated in the Bastamag article (in French) that presents the first cooperative of inhabitants for aging people in France: Chamarel-les-Barges, in the suburbs of Lyon, created in 2019. In the Bordeaux metropolis, in order not to be alone and to pool livelihoods, retirees create a tailor-made retirement home in cohabitation with collective and private living spaces, as part of a real estate project that is not speculative: the cooperative of inhabitants of Boboyaka la Castagne is under construction.

The self-managed, participatory, ecological and feminist house for women aged 60 and over: the Maison des Babayagas, inaugurated in 2013 in Montreuil after more than 15 years of gestation, is one of the emblematic places of shared housing in France. Of the twenty-five dwellings, twenty-one are reserved for women over 60 years of age, meeting the criteria for access to social housing. The other four, to young people under 30 years of age. Collective vegetable garden, shared monthly meals, associative activities in the neighborhood dot the collective life.

In addition, inclusive housing is a place of life, freely chosen, allowing people in a situation of fragility (related to age, a disability, an illness, etc) to live independently, while benefiting from shared services (health services, meals, animation, socialization time). Article 45 of the French Elan law (23 November 2018) now authorises the colocation of people with disabilities with a maximum of 5 people. One of the benefits of living in a shared habitat is conviviality and socialization within the home, in addition to household help, rehabilitation services, etc.

Even if these forms of housing tend to multiply, the legal, financial, etc. difficulties are still too numerous. The public authorities are not yet sufficiently supportive of cohousing.

Belgium

Beyond living together, the issue is also a political issue, that of the values of solidarity and questioning of private property and non-speculation of real estate, but also self-management, respect for the environment, etc. Residents’ cooperatives or Brussels Community Land Trusts are examples of this. Another vision of urbanization, community, a form of emancipation through its housing tool?

Spain

In recent years Spain is experiencing the emergence of cooperative models of housing in cession of use (Vivienda cooperativa en cesión de uso). They are articulated for the development of community projects such as cohousing, collaborative housing, with proposals with multiple impacts and the challenge of implementing the culture of public-cooperative collaboration to influence sectors with difficulties.The first experiences, arising from the real estate crisis, have become icons of socio-community and architectural configuration, and also references in other aspects such as care, sustainability and efficiency. The impact of these projects have increased the interest of public administrations.

These new community proposals represent a paradigm shift in the Spanish State with respect to traditional housing cooperatives, which have been articulated as a resource for financing and real estate development for subsequent sale in the free market. The new cooperative housing:cooperative project -- tailored to the human group, social structure for the management of community life, collective ownership and with cession of use of spaces, services to its members, left out of price increases and speculative interests of the market - are distributed in urban, peri-urban or rural areas, with the Senior variants for the elderly, with special attention to dependence and care, and the so-called intergenerational, as well as specific groups.

Examples of initiatives: aimed at the elderly, Trabensol, in a rural setting in Torremocha del Jarama; Entrepatios in Madrid, in Catalonia, great profusion in the city of Barcelona, La Borda, an emblematic case; Cirerers promoted by the foundation La Dinamo and the cooperative Civic Sostre, members of the Xarxa d’Economia Solidària (XES).

Italy https://www.corradi.eu/fr/magazine/cohousing-exemples-italie Hungary

Main networks working on this issue

The Fédération française des coopératives d’habitants Habicoop supports this model of sustainable collective ownership, for its social utility and for its non-speculative nature. Habicoop represents cooperatives before the public authorities and collaborates with groups or institutions likely to promote the creation of cooperatives. Between 2020 and today, cooperative projects have more than doubled: from 30 to 65! Certainly because housing is becoming affordable economically and these initiatives create social relationships that make them desirable.

The REAS Red de Redes in Spain has a grupo Vivienda Cooperativa in cession de uso that works to communivate and promote cohousing, as a part od solidarity economy.